Building A Door

The Thief & The Cobbler workprint is full of unfinished shots, ranging from long and complex to short and simple. While we can improve the fidelity of the complex shots, we can't hope to actually finish them. The level of artistry that went into constructing those sequences far surpasses not only our own abilities, but perhaps even the abilities of many professional animators today:

Just perhaps... 

Some of the material is less daunting. Little tidbits here and there fall within our range of potential and can stand some spit n' polish. Things like sponging out film dirt or splice frames from the footage, re-drawing a piece of unfinished storyboard, or adding in some missing sound or music.

Then there are those shots that fall right inbetween. They're short, but might be missing a crucial element like a background or some minor animation that has to be done from scratch.

Making stuff from scratch is one thing, but making stuff from scratch that also has to be consistent with a visually sophisticated work that is not your own is a whole other bag o' kippers. Like life drawing, it's not enough to just recreate what you see. You have to interpret it from all angles.

This is one of those shots...

In a nutshell, the sequence is a quick zoom from a wide shot of a prison door to a tight shot of a barred window. ZigZag's hungry pet vulture, Phido, is peering in with one sinister yellow eye. No finished footage of this shot as intended exists. All we have to go on from the workprint is a pencil test of abysmal fidelity.

Phido peeping in. 

The shot is relatively simple. Garrett observed it would be easy enough to animate if only we had a nice clean shot of the cell door. The only glimpse we get of the door is during a tight POV shot in which Tack is making a cat's cradle visage of YumYum with some luminous thread.

Dem bedroom eyes. 

As you can see, the door is pretty obscured. While there is never a clear shot of just the background, Tack's hands move from side to side throughout the sequence, exposing it one chunk at a time. I screencapped nearly two dozen frames to capture all the pieces I needed to re-assemble the background like a jigsaw puzzle.

The colors of the pieces were often inconsistent, and some chunks were just unobtainable (I originally typed "ungettable", which I swear is a word, but Webster's says it isn't). A crapload of stamp-tooling and color correcting later, I manage to recreate the background plate and then some.

Click for high res.

While this is great for the wide shot, the resolution ain't gonna cut it for a close-up. A detailed close-up of the window had to be made too. So I made one.

Click for high res.

It's tricky business making an image with such a low pixel density look good enough for an HD remaster. Garrett was very pleased with the final results, and I can't wait to see the shot fully animated.

Hours of hard work for a shot that will ultimately be about three seconds long. Welcome to film, asshole.